Britain is not the only place where such a thing has happened. France did not legislate for its workers to have paid holiday until Leon Blum took that progressive step in 1936; but when he did all hell broke loose. The Riviera was beyond the reach of the ouvriers, because land there was too expensive. But in the less fashionable resorts of Brittany, Normandy and the Pas-de-Calais it was possible to put up cheap hotels and invite the masses in. As they had done in England before the Great War, the aristocracy and the haute bourgeoisie left — had Proust survived another 15 years he would not have been found at "Balbec" in the late Thirties. However, as they appear not to have done in England, they eventually came back.
Both French and British seaside resorts suffered a downturn from the mid-1960s, when Franco launched the Spanish package tourist trade, and it became within the reach of all but the very indigent to afford a hot week or fortnight in the Costas. British resorts were left to mods and rockers, but even they and their cultural descendants preferred to go somewhere where the weather was better. The British seaside became a minority interest. In France, though, the casinos at Deauville, Le Touquet and Dinard were spruced up, the hotels were refurbished and upgraded, and the civilised, middle-class French flocked back to these resorts. And, since the Russians have moved into the Cote d'Azur in large numbers, the resorts along the Channel coast have found a new popularity with the affluent and the discerning.
On the other side of that Channel things are, perhaps, not so bleak as they were a decade ago. Outside the towns, the southern coastline is particularly beautiful: not just in Sussex, but on the Isle of Wight, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. Certain resorts have acquired a cachet, albeit for hosting braying, boozing and fornicating well-heeled teenagers celebrating their release from schooling and preparing for university. There is the odd good restaurant. The weather is usually no worse than that in northern France, just across the water. And there is nothing in many of these resorts for those who would make them unpleasant for their mainstream clientele.
According to the new East Sussex Pevsner, signs of revival are under way even in towns that seemed as lost as Hastings did. Bexhill renovated the stunning De La Warr Pavilion a few years ago, rescuing it from decay and in the process saving one of the finest Art Deco buildings in England. Attempts continue to make the rest of Bexhill live up to its example. The ninth Earl De La Warr built the Pavilion in the 1930s as a statement of hope after years of decline. Eighty years later, there is no reason, given the right attitude on the part of those who govern these seaside towns, why their best days should not still be ahead of them.
